


fire and whispers

by scarsandstars



Series: fire and ashes [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Feelings Realization, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Shiro (Voltron), Pining Keith (Voltron), Pining Shiro (Voltron), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Build, shiro loves you baby, up to season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 19:31:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17028657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarsandstars/pseuds/scarsandstars
Summary: "I never thought I'd get a chance to fly after you disappeared," Keith confesses. His words pull at Shiro's heart in a way that is deep and painful and almost punches the breath out of him. "I thought I was grounded for good."Shiro regards him for a long moment, Keith seemingly unaware of Shiro's eyes on him. The strings tugging at his heart start to move towards Keith.---or, "how Shiro realised he had fallen in love with Keith."





	fire and whispers

**Author's Note:**

> probably the last thing fandom needs right now is angst but the crap inspired me to finish this and here it is. it ends with the season 2 finale so you know what happens at the end. but fear not, the series will end somewhere happy.

"Ad Astra Per Aspera."

To the stars through hardship.

It was a joke he shared with Adam, that he would get a cheesy tattoo about space or the stars someday. Shiro just kept putting it off and putting it off, and eventually he forgot all about it. He forgot about so many things.

Some of them come back like a warm summer rain, or with the quietness of the first sunrise he saw when he returned to earth. Some come back in the middle of the night like a gust of freezing wind and grip his throat.

He doesn't talk about any of them. He keeps his rain and his sunrise and the cold breezes hidden in boxes inside himself. It's why he smiles to himself sometimes, and also why some days he doesn't share a word with anyone. There's too many things he needs to find a place for. 

A part of him knows he could put some of those things out there to lessen his burden, but he's never been good at sharing burdens. He supposes it was different at one point. For a while. Back then, in his past life. 

After that final conversation with Adam in the officers' common room, of all places, Shiro completely threw himself into the Kerberos mission: he trained, he studied, he flew countless hours in the simulators, and spent more time than he cared for in the physician's office making sure he would be in his best shape for the months the mission would take. He didn't really talk to anyone about how he had a hard time getting used to sleeping in a giant bed alone or not having Adam there to make him breakfast before driving to the garrison. He missed the smell of bacon and waffles on Sunday mornings, and the taste of coffee on Adam's lips after they went their separate ways at the entrance of the main building. He missed Adam rubbing his back and shoulders after they'd been painful and stiff for days. He missed Adam being absolutely anal about Shiro taking every single one of his medications at the exact time he was supposed to. 

Shiro mentioned it to Keith before the mission, one time, because Keith seemed awfully perceptive of Shiro's bad mood when everybody else just took his cardboard smiles and ran with them. He remembers that Keith said he was sorry and touched his shoulder, that his eyes were huge and sad and it made Shiro laugh and squeeze his bony shoulder in return. 

"I'll be fine, Keith, it's not the first time I've been dumped. Sure won't be the last. I'm just glad next time I won't be about to fly a potentially life-threatening mission into the depths of the solar system, you know? Silver linings." 

Keith looked pained. Not many people appreciated Shiro's dry, self-deprecating half-jokes. So Shiro had chuckled and given Keith a light, playful shove.

"Keith, I'm fine, I promise."

"Okay."

"Thank you, though."

But the next weeks, Keith still looked worried and frowned every time he talked to Shiro, and, as he heard from the other professors, had been a real dick to Adam in his classes. Shiro didn't try to talk to Keith about it and didn't really ask him to stop being a jerk, though. Maybe he was just being petty. 

Then, the day the ship launched, Keith was there, waving, right at the front of the crowd. Adam wasn't there. At least not anywhere Shiro could see. 

So Shiro took Adam's absence and the pain it caused with him on the journey into the stars, but he stubbornly refused to dwell on it. To give himself time to grieve the last four years of his life. He put it off, and put it off, and then the ground shook and the Galra ship appeared in the sky. So it was just another thing he forgot, that pain and the loneliess it brought. Like his silly tattoo. 

Ad Astra Per Aspera. 

*****

There's flashes of purple in his dreams. Some mornings, there's also flashes of a strange phantom pain along his arm. He's thought about how badly he'd want to rip off that thing many more times than he would ever admit to anyone. Maybe even to himself. 

There's echoes of strange voices in his dreams. He wakes up sweating some mornings, while mumbles he can't decipher play in his mind like a broken record. He doesn't pay attention to them, goes out of his way to ignore them while he sticks almost obsessively to his routine, still, until he can't anymore. 

The prisoners they release fix the static in his mind that was shielding him from the horror that scarred his body and took his arm. It makes his stomach drop, and he can barely register the hurt in Pidge's voice. Still, he focuses on whatever he has to focus on. Keeping spirits up. Keeping his new team and all others safe. Fighting. 

And it is a fight that brings it back. 

He listens to Keith's voice calling out his name like it were the echoes in his dreams. He leaves his body, he sweats and pants and feels a void inside his chest, but he pulls himself back to the reality of the moment and the monster threatening them.

It all comes to him like a flood. He doesn't know how to swim through it. But he doesn't burden the team with it. They have a mission. There's always a mission. 

*****

Keith's voice is soft whenever he comes to him. Those rare times that he does. 

Maybe Shiro did become a different person during that time he was imprisoned. Maybe that's what's keeping Keith from coming to him like he did before Kerberos. But then again, Keith has changed, too, and it seems unfair that Shiro would expect Keith to be the same after everything that happened when he was gone. Being expelled and living basically isolated for a year--that will do things to a person. 

They're different people now. 

Shiro hadn't realised how much he'd needed a friendly face until it was right before him--different, hardened, but still, here. 

"Are you okay?" is what Keith asks, almost every time. 

"I will be," Shiro smiles. Always. 

He hadn't realised how much he'd needed a friendly face, and he also didn't realise he had built a wall around himself. Many times, back then, in a different life, he told Keith he needed to find a way to let people in. Some cliché phrase, like "No man is an island."

Unless your survival depends on it. 

*****

His bedroom in the Castle of Lions is next to Keith's. It didn't occur to him to be worried about the times he's woken up grunting and gasping and sweating from his nightmares until the night he hears grunts coming from Keith's room through the wall. He pays attention to them: Keith's grunting and whining words Shiro can't make out. It sounds distinctly like the nightmares he has. It breaks his heart to think that Keith has been through the same kind of things that cause nightmares and cold sweats, but then again, they all have. 

He thinks of Pidge and Hunk and Lance, and wonders if they've all spent nights avoiding sleep out of fear like he has. He's sure Keith has done it more than once. There's dark circles under his eyes, sometimes. Awful and familiar. 

He thinks of Allura, too, and Coran, and can't imagine how endlessly lonely it must feel to be the only remaining survivors of your race. He can't imagine having earth destroyed, all the places he loved, and the people he once loved, and all his memories wiped out from existence in one second. This is why he can't stop fighting. Everyone who is here, and everything that's left behind. 

In the morning, Shiro waits until the rest of them have left to stand next to Keith and touch his shoulder. 

"Are you okay?" it's his turn to ask. 

"Yeah," Keith replies, with a light frown and openly soft eyes, his voice barely above a whisper. "Don't worry about it."

Keith smiles. It's the same kind of smile Shiro recognises in himself. The "lying for the sake of a greater good" smile. 

"I'm here if you need me. You know that."

Keith's eyes grow impossibly softer. 

"I know."

Shiro can't think of something else to say. He can't think of anything to do but offer a comforting hug, but he thinks that even that would feel flat. So in the end he does nothing, and Keith walks away. 

War is devastating. 

*****

Keith does come to him, later. He approaches Shiro in silence, so quiet that his shadow almost startles him. Shiro is sitting on a chair, going over information on the screen. The stars shine bright against the vast darkness of the universe beyond the glass. Sometimes it's soothing. Sometimes it's endlessly painful. 

"Hey," Keith says, and sits on a table a few inches away from Shiro, wrapping his jacket around himself.

"Hey, Keith. You alright?"

"Yeah. No. I don't... I don't know," he frowns.

Shiro taps the screen to make the blue display disappear, and turns on the chair to focus his full attention on Keith. He doesn't need to say anything else--he knows Keith well enough. He'll start talking when he's ready to. After he frowns and crosses his arms and lets out a sigh or two, the words will come out of him. It's just a matter of patience.

"Do you have any regrets?" Keith asks after a few minutes, his voice hesitant and unsure.

Shiro tries to figure out where this conversation is going before he can answer. He guesses it's something left behind, back home.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think I do. But I try not to dwell on them," Shiro answers, almost whispering. "I can't go back and change things, so what's the point? You have to--" 

"Would you?" Keith asks, his eyes fixed on a spot on the floor. When Shiro hums for a second, Keith explains himself. "If you had a second chance and you could fix something you regret, would you do it?"

Shiro can't help but think of Adam. Just a flash in his mind. He thinks of how bright the sun was the morning the ship launched. He doesn't regret it. Not really.

"I think I would," he says.

"Even if no good would come of it?" Keith sounds defeated. Shiro can't figure out why.

"You can't know that."

Keith chews on his lip.

"If you're given a second chance, you should make the best of it. You can't focus only on what could go wrong. If it went wrong once there's a chance it won't even hurt as much the second time around. At least you'd know what to expect."

The frown on Keith's face deepens, and the silence that falls between them for a few minutes is almost deafening. Shiro just watches him. He hasn't stopped looking at the spot on the floor, still has his arms crossed; he still looks tense and miserable, and Shiro would want nothing more than to find the right words to comfort him. But it seems that everything he says makes the lines between Keith's eyebrows deeper and his muscles contract more around himself, like he wanted to build a shield from something.

Shiro stands up and takes that single step closer to Keith. He rests his hand--his flesh hand--on his shoulder and leans into his field of vision, Keith's arms immediately falling onto his lap. He meets Keith's eyes and finds them wide and bright, like something hurtful is hidden deep inside them.

"Keith, what's wrong?"

Keith looks him in the eye for a long time. When Shiro gives his shoulder a soft squeeze, he can feel his entire body tense up, so he lets go and stuffs his hand in his pocket. He can't help how concerned he looks, or his own frown.

"Shiro, I..." Keith whispers, and chews on his lip once more. He doesn't stop looking into his eyes. Almost like what he wanted to say could be read in shades of blue and violet, instead of merely spoken.

"Yeah?"

"Nothing. It's not important," Keith closes his eyes and then looks away, leans back against the wall and crosses his arms again.

"Alright."

Shiro moves to prop himself up and sit on the table next to Keith. He crosses his arms as well, and they sit in silence for a while.

He watches the stars, the strange constellations he never imagined existed. Something he can't explain aches in his heart.

*****

Keith's voice is fierce in his ear. Shiro can almost make out the sound of his footsteps on rocks and geisers through the blinding pain he's feeling, through the growls these strange creatures make as they keep trying to get to him.

The wound on his side glows and the pain radiates from it like electricity to every last inch of his body. It burns and stings; it almost feels like an infection spreading through every cell in his bloodstream at the speed of light. 

He fights through the pain, he falls, he grunts, he cries out; he sweats and bleeds all over the ground of this strange, grey planet. And then Keith saves him. Keith with the fierce voice and the wild eyes, inside the cockpit of the black lion. He saves Shiro's life in a cloud of light and dust and a deafening lion's roar. 

Shiro thought he was meant to die out here in space, somewhere. He hoped his death would come while he was surrounded by stars and nebulae, and he was ready for it. He's been facing death for years. He's not scared of it anymore. If he gets to have a say in where and how he ceases to exist, he wants it to be close to the stars. 

"You're gonna make it," Keith says. 

Death wouldn't stand in Keith's way. 

*****

"If it wasn't for you, my life would have been a lot different."

Shiro goes over Keith's words while he lies awake at night, staring at the cool glow of the blue lights in his room. The words cut through flashes of purple and memories of fights and bruises and wounds. He doesn't sleep much anymore.

After that day, after everything that happens, Shiro catches himself looking only at Keith almost every time they're in the same room. He finds his gaze drawn to Keith's eyes, finds that his body naturally gravitates towards Keith like a moon orbiting its planet. There is something in Keith's eyes, something in his frowns and the way his shoulders relax under Shiro's touch that grab and rattle something inside him that he thought was lost. Something he never even thought of during all this time--during this new life. 

Shiro doesn't give himself time to think about it too deeply, or analyze it like he would a fight pattern or a flight course. He hopes that it will eventually be forgotten. Like the tattoo, like the pain, like the loneliness. Nothing can last forever.

*****

Shiro's heart beats furious inside his chest, pounding and echoing in his ears as he watches, helpless, through the screen. He watches Keith fall and stand back up, his bruised face and his jagged breaths, watches him clutch the blade in his hand, and he watches him bleed. His heart catches in his throat, and he mumbles Keith's name while barely registering that he's doing it.

He never thought of the possibility of losing Keith. Through all the battles they've fought, no matter how many odds stood against them, Shiro has never even entertained the thought that Keith might not come out alive. It seemed impossible, it always has seemed impossible. Keith is strong, so much stronger than anyone would give him credit for. Shiro has known this for as long as he's known Keith: he is a survivor. Much like Shiro himself. He didn't think he would ever have to face the fear of losing him like this. 

But it's knowledge or death, and Shiro is supposed to take that as an answer and a justification for Keith's pain. He refuses to do it. 

As he watches Keith stand up yet again, the possibility of living in a universe without Keith suddenly seems tangible, grazing the very tips of his fingers. He struggles but is restrained, and soon he sees himself standing in front of Keith lying on the floor. He sees himself helping Keith stand, and he sees himself walking out on Keith. Abandoning him at the worst possible time, giving up on him when he most needs a friend.

"Your friend desperately wants to see you," is what Kolivan says, and it makes Shiro's heart turn on itself.

It's what Shiro wishes the most, too. 

In the midst of the chaos erupting when the red lion starts to attack the base, he runs towards Keith with little else in mind: all he wants is to get him out of there, he doesn't care about losing their most powerful allies in this war, he doesn't care how many more Blades he has to fight to keep Keith safe. He'd fight every one of them, for as long as it takes, as fiercely as he can, for as long as his body would take it.

It doesn't come to it. The blade glows and transforms in Keith's hands, and the only explanation they both get is that there is Galra blood in him. It leaves Shiro with endless unanswered questions, it leaves Keith with even more, he imagines, but they are safe to return to the Castle.

*****

"Do you remember," Keith whispers the following night, "that time Iverson caught me sneaking out of the dorms to go meet you at the roof?"

They're alone in Keith's room. It's mostly empty, austere and practical, with no decorations and only a few personal belongings on display: a notebook, a handful of pens, a tablet, and a pair of slippers next to the bed. The dim blue lights glow over a brand new scar on Keith's arm peeking out from under his shirt, a thick, rugged line that cuts down his shoulder to the back of his elbow. Shiro doesn't know how many more scars are hidden under Keith's soft, thin shirt. It pains him to imagine. They feel like his own.

Shiro chuckles. "I had to come up with some bullshit excuse about having to go over constellations with you because you didn't remember them."

"That wasn't a lie," Keith laughs.

"I was afraid it was gonna cost me my promotion that year," Shiro admits. "I never got Iverson off my ass after that."

They share a quiet laugh. Shiro wonders what Keith remembers about that night. All he knows is that he was excited to talk about the trajectory they'd follow on the Kerberos mission he so badly wanted to be assigned to, and wanted to share his dreams. He wanted to pull up screens of star maps and point at the sky and be shameless about his childish excitement. He remembers a spark lighting up in Keith's eyes, a wide smile as he peeked through the telescope, an endless list of questions.

"I remember I asked you what it felt like to just... see nothing for weeks. Do you remember? What it was like to just see darkness for weeks or for months, even."

"I do remember."

"I never thought I'd get a chance to fly after you disappeared," Keith confesses. His words pull at Shiro's heart in a way that is deep and painful and almost punches the breath out of him. "I thought I was grounded for good."

Shiro regards him for a long moment, Keith seemingly unaware of Shiro's eyes on him: on the quiet rise and fall of his breathing, on the glimpses of melancholy hidden under his eyelashes, on the shape of his lips. The strings tugging at his heart start to move towards Keith. It is only then that he finally understands. It's only then and here in this cool room guarded from the rest of the universe that something whispers that word inside Shiro's soul. Keith looks up at him and smiles, one of those soft gestures that he seems to always reserve for Shiro. It burns through him with the force of a forest fire. Love.

Shiro returns the smile. He can feel that fire in his heart, ignited by a simple gesture and the sound of Keith's voice. Keith's vulnerability, the openness his eyes betray--and have they always been this beautiful? Had he noticed the complex shades of violet in them before? The blue lights cast upon them make them look like the ocean at night, still and calm, safe and calling to him. The fire crackles inside him.

"I hope it was worth it," Shiro says, and moves to sit on the bed next to Keith instead of the chair. He shatters the distance that was the final wall between himself and the fire that had threatened to grow inside him since he sat before that bonfire in the grey planet where he faced his death. 

Keith's smile grows. "It was," he says, and places his hand on top of Shiro's on the mattress, sudden and warm, startling him. Feeding the fire. "I'm glad I could do it with you."

The words get stuck in Shiro's throat, forming a tight, painful knot he can't even try to swallow. The decisive battle is close, too close. He wants to have hope, but he knows what stops him from speaking, what stops him from pulling Keith close and kissing him, from wrapping his arms around him, is fear. The Champion is held back by fear.

Naively, he wishes Keith can see the words written in his eyes during that long moment of silence they share. He wishes Keith could see it all spelled out for him in shades of brown molded into a soft gaze Shiro didn't think he was capable of anymore. "I love you, Keith," is what he hopes he sees. "I love you. I want to make it out of this and come back to you. I love you. I love you."

Keith throws his arms around Shiro's neck and holds him tight, and after a second of surprise, Shiro wraps his arms around him. Keith's face is hidden in the crook of his neck, and he can feel Keith's heart beating against his own. He squeezes his arms around Keith and can feel the softness of his black hair against his cheek, the warmth of his skin, make out the shape of his collarbones against his chest and of his spine under his fingers. Shiro closes his eyes. He doesn't remember the last time he felt at peace like this. At home like this.

The last thing they share, before Shiro stands up and leaves back to his own room, is a smile. Maybe, after closing the door, Shiro finally understands Keith's questions about regret.

*****

Shiro fights like hell. It's what he does. It's what he's always done. The pain and the confusion of the flashing lights won't stop him, won't make him give up. Not on his team, not on the universe, not on himself.

Shiro fights like hell.

He wants them all to fight, too. This can't be how it ends--this will not be how it ends, not if he has any say in it. He will fight to the last second. To the last breath. To the last, loud, frantic beat of his heart. 

"Keith?" he asks, though his throat is painful, and closing in on itself.

It is the last word he says before every colour fades to black.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! hope it didn't make bad feelings worse but if you made it to the end, cheers! find me. on the twittererer @gothshirogane and say hi :)


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